Faa Advises Airlines: Make Safety Interesting

The agency says that passengers will pay better attention to pre-flight safety information briefings if they are 'interesting and attractive.'

Safety specialists generally agree that passenger briefings on airplanes are boring, that most people do not listen to them or read the instruction cards and that even if they did they might not know what to do or where to go in an emergency.

Apart from the introduction of videotapes, briefings have not changed much since the early 1960s, when crash investigators first linked some fatalities to the poor quality of safety briefings.

Now the government, which regulates the content of these materials, is stepping in.

After four years of research, symposiums and public meetings, the Federal Aviation Administration has decided to issue an advisory memorandum to the airlines.

The government's long-awaited advice to airlines includes this suggestion from the FAA: ''Make the safety information briefings as interesting and attractive as possible.''

The nuts and bolts of the nine-page advisory also says that passengers should be given more information about oxygen masks, seat belts, positions to assume in a crash and the location of emergency exits.

Some safety specialists say the agency's action is something less than what they had hoped for.

''I can't see this boring circular making any difference in how the carriers conduct their briefings,'' said Matthew Finucane, director of air safety at the Association of Flight Attendants, a union with 24,000 members.

''The FAA advisory responds to only a small part of what we recommended,'' said said Nora C. Marshall, an airline crash investigator at the National Transportation Safety Board and author of a 1985 study by the advisory board that was very critical of safety briefings and cards.

She said the aviation agency rejected the board's call for mandatory standards that would have required airlines to scientifically test their presentations to ensure that passengers understood essential information.

In a written statement, the FAA said mandatory standards are not necessary because airlines already follow ''a logical process to ensure acceptable levels of comprehension by passengers.''

Donell Pollard, cabin safety program manager at the aviation agency, maintains that the advisory could lead to more innovative presentations.

''I think the advisory is pretty much of an advance, but not ev erybody is going to be happy with it because everybody did not get all of their ideas included,'' she said.

The safety board's 1985 study said: ''For over 22 years, accident investigations have identified problems with the content, accuracy and manner of presenting safety information to passengers. Neither the FAA nor the airline industry has taken steps to develop criteria to quantitatively and qualitatively assess the content and manner of conveying safety information.''

The board's review of videotaped oral briefings used by eight carriers found that half did not tell passengers to note the location of emergency exits.

Federal regulations and advisory circulars covering safety briefings are minimal and, until the new advisory was issued, airlines have not been asked to inform passengers about the location of emergency exits.

The 1985 study also found that said safety briefing cards were inconsistent and sometimes wrong. Some showed figures bracing for a crash in unsafe positions, others advised passengers in a water crash to use exits where there were no life rafts and most showed people incorrectly standing while putting on life jackets.

How do airlines develop their briefings?

Walter S. Coleman, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association of America, a trade association, said airlines base their oral briefings on the aviation agency's regulations and its circulars.

Periodically, he said, they revise their messages to incorporate suggestions from passengers, the safety board and communication consultants.

Most airlines prepare their briefing cards in the same way, but there are exceptions.

Interaction Research Corp., a communications research company in Olympia, Wash., uses the scientific approach.

Dr. Daniel A. Johnson, a psychologist and president of Interaction, said that his cards do not wind up in seatback pockets unless every illustration is understood by 27 out of 30 people in random surveys. The company has created about 40 cards, including some for United Airlines, Continetal, USAir and Southwest Air.

''Cards aren't as effective as they could be because a lot of people don't read them,'' he said. ''A lot of people are fatalistic and think that if there is going to be an accident they will be killed. But only 5 percent of all airline accidents result in everybody being killed and in 80 percent of the accidents no one is killed. It is in that other 15 percent of the accidents, where some people are killed and others aren't, that knowing what to do determines whether a passenger's going to live or die.''

He said, however, that understanding directions does not necessarily mean being able to follow them, particularly when they involve safety equipment that is, in his view, unnecessarily complicated.

In one of his studies, for example, five out of 15 people - including some aircraft engineers - could not put on a life vest correctly or inflate it after viewing the best videotaped instructions available.